I have only just joined, to be honest I didnt know it existed until a couple of days ago, I heard about it via a GPS forum, it is fantastic and I am really impressed. I have changed a couple of local POI and added a missing road so far, as I get out and about with my GPSr I will be adding more to the map!

I dont know about the Manchester area, but I could do with some help I using this! Are there any useful video tutorials anywhere showing you how to add things, like water features for instance? There are some I could add but I wouldnt know where to start!

The way you add everything is the same, you click around the border of the object and either make a long line for roads and rivers, or you make a closed loop around the perimeter of lakes, forests, etc.

In the online editor the bar on the left side where you enter the information about objects has two buttons on the bottom, 'simple' and 'advanced'. If you click to the advanced tab you will see that all the information is just entered as key value pairs, so for example a city street has a key of 'highway' and a value of 'residential'; when we are talking about this we write it as highway=residential.

For adding lakes you will want to add natural=water, rivers and streams are waterway=river and waterway=stream respectively. Also, whenever you trace something from satellite imagery it is a good idea to add a source tag (most likely source=Bing) so that we know where the info comes from. Then if we find out there was a problem with the imagery (maybe it was aligned wrong) it is easy to hunt down what needs to be changed, in addition to providing credit to the imagery provider.

There is no doubt there is a learning curve, and procedures to follow. I think the key thing is not to be too worried about making mistakes, particularly if you are working and contributing to a part of the map that needs and will benefit from your input.

The key I found when starting was that one often returns to parts of the map you edited when you were just starting and correct omissions / mistakes that you made as you find out more about the process.

Also, look / inspect with Josm / potlatch high density areas like London where a lot of mappers have worked and reviewed each other's work - look at the data they are adding to POIs, roads etc and follow the examples as best you can.

OSM editing has come a very long way in just a couple of years with JOSM integrating BING imagery, a plethora of free tools for downloading GPS data ( GPS Babel ) , handy tools such as walking papers - free maps for Garmin ( http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ ) and all the other devices.

Have fun, ask questions directly to individual members or on the diary / wiki